Next to discipline, the most persistently vexing issue teachers and parents have is the issue of freedom. Freedom became fashionable with the rise of the alternative schooling movement, not only in India but the world over. I remember being drawn into several very spirited debates on freedom in schools, the extent to which freedom ought to be given, where freedom may degenerate into licence, and why sparing the rod indeed spoils the child. In most of these discussions, what disturbed me was the recurring phrase “giving freedom”—you cannot give freedom as you would give time or space; freedom is something that has to evolve, it cannot be a “given”. Whatever is given can also be taken back. The very fact that I can give you freedom implies that I have the authority and the capacity to take away your freedom at any moment, which makes freedom conditional; and conditional freedom cannot be true freedom—it can, at best, be latitude. Either freedom is unconditional or it is not freedom at all. I have often heard objections being raised to such “unbridled freedom”. My question is: can you have anything called “bridled” freedom? Wouldn’t that be like tying a rope to your feet and telling you that you are now free to go anywhere you want?
Freedom, in its true sense, evolves out of awareness, choice and responsibility. If I am not in a position to choose my course of action out of my own understanding and awareness, and if I cannot assume full responsibility for what I choose, then I cannot be regarded as a free individual at all.
Freedom has very little to do with doing anything I want. That is where most of us go wrong—all our apprehensions about freedom stem from our assumption that freedom means that we are free to do anything that we want to do. But is this so? Consider the fact that most people are composites of so many diverse influences that have moulded their beings over the years: the influences of their parents, other significant adults, teachers, friends, society, the culture, the media; consider also the fact that most people are largely unconscious of how all these influences work through their physical, vital or mental beings dictating and determining all their actions and reactions, even their motivations and impulses.
If you consider these facts carefully, you will see clearly that hardly any one of us can claim to be an individual in the true sense of the word. One can be an individual only if one is aware of oneself, aware of the reasons and motivations for one’s actions and reactions, and able to stand apart from the medley of external influences and past conditionings, to be able to see what in oneself is actually one’s own. This is most difficult to do because most of the times we unquestioningly accept whatever rises within us as our own. If this is so, then what kind of freedom do we assume when we claim that one is free to do what one wants to do? The fact of the matter is that we are not even free to be our self, leave alone free to do what we want to do. Most of the time, we don’t even know what we really want to do.
Thus freedom cannot exist without individuality. Only one who is free of external influences, internal conditionings, biases and prejudices, fears and compulsions of his own nature can claim to be an individual, and only such an individual is capable of taking responsibility for his actions, simply because his own actions are indeed his own; and only such an individual is capable of freedom.
To illustrate this a bit more graphically: imagine a puppet moved by numerous invisible strings of conditionings, fears, biases, compulsions over which it has no control, it must move the way the strings are pulled; now imagine that this puppet can think, and imagine further that the puppet thinks itself free because it interprets the fact that it is moving as an act of free movement just because it cannot see the strings. Would its sense of freedom, or its apprehensions of freedom, amount to much in real terms? For this puppet to come to real freedom, it will have to be released from its strings. That is the first condition. Only then will it be able to move its limbs the way it wants to move. Till then, neither freedom nor responsibility would make much sense.
Integral education must begin with this premise: that humans are conditioned, they are not free. Only then can an actual evolution towards freedom begin. Once I know I am not free, the next logical step would be to find out the factors—the strings in our puppet illustration—that prevent freedom, that create conditions for the opposite of freedom in us. Once that is done, the next step in the process would be to free ourselves consciously from those “strings” and not allow new ones to form. The children must be made aware of their own conditionings, they must be aware of how their actions and reactions are controlled by all their “strings” and they must be shown that it is possible to develop individuality, develop the capacity for independent reasoning and action.
As all educational processes we have been discussing, this will take time and persistent effort. At each step, the child will have to be made aware of her thoughts, feelings, actions: always playfully, always gently, so that the child does not get pressurised. And at each step, the teacher will have to be sensitive enough to know when not to persist with the questioning, for there must be times when the child is allowed to act impulsively, without reason or awareness, for that too is part of the overall process of growing up.
Freedom therefore will evolve along with the integral process. The whole question about freedom is irrelevant in an integral perspective, because freedom is not something that the school gives to its teachers or children as a policy—freedom is a living process that evolves as integral education itself evolves, it evolves through the evolution of self-awareness, self-discipline, and the sense of personal responsibility. And it is inevitably a process that involves the school, the teachers, the parents as much as the children.
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